Bone replacement material, such as bone cements, can be used during certain medical treatments to help repair and/or reconstruct bone (e.g., fractured bone). The ability of certain bone replacement material to repair and/or reconstruct bone can be enhanced by the inclusion of bioactive agents (e.g., bone morphogenic protein), which promote the growth of bone.
To prepare bone replacement material, a powdery substance is generally combined with a liquid, and the resultant combination is mixed together to form a bone cement paste. The bone cement paste can then be delivered to a treatment site (e.g., a fracture site) to help repair and/or reconstruct the bone.
Bone replacement material is typically added to a mortar and then undergoes a mixing process with a mixing element such as a blade, pestle or spatula. Once the desired consistency is reached, the bone replacement material is typically transferred from the mortar to a syringe by removing the plunger from the syringe and then transferring the bone replacement material using a spatula and placing it into the syringe barrel and then placing the plunger back in the syringe barrel. This process is time consuming, messy and often there is wastage of expensive bone replacement material not only left behind in the mortar but bone replacement material may also drip out on the outside of the syringe. There also may be an increased risk of environmental contamination (e.g., bacteria, viruses, particulates, etc.) by removing the plunger, as now the top inside of the barrel and the head of the plunger are exposed to the outside environment. Further, the user may set the plunger down to fill the syringe barrel, leaving it outside the sterile field, which may also cause contamination.
Often, with bone replacement material, such as bone cements, time consuming steps that delay the transfer of the bone cement from the mortar to the syringe may cause the bone cement to prematurely harden and thus render the bone cement useless for in vivo use.
Therefore, there is a need for bone replacement material mixing and delivery devices and methods that facilitate the mixing and transferring of substances that, when mixed, yield medically useful compositions. More specifically, there is a need for such devices that can conveniently and efficiently mix the component parts of bone replacement materials and transfer it to the syringe while reducing waste and contamination of the bone replacement materials.